Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
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Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
#83: Are We Raising Kids To Be Impressive-Or Be Themselves?
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What If Success Isn't What We Think It Is?
What if success isn't about becoming impressive?
What if it's about becoming yourself?
In this episode of Transform Your Life: Just Count Me In, Sari Stone explores a question that has been coming up through her work with young people, parents, and leaders:
Are we helping people discover who they are—or unconsciously asking them to become who we think they should be?
This isn't an episode about criticizing parents.
It's a celebration of the parents who are becoming more conscious, more curious, and more willing to let their children have their own journeys.
It's also a much bigger conversation about success, identity, authenticity, and the lives we choose to create.
Sari shares her own story of graduating from high school, taking time to travel, crossing the country, and eventually moving to Colorado before going to college—a path that wasn't what her parents had envisioned for her.
Looking back, she recognizes something important:
Her job wasn't to complete the part of her parents' lives that they hadn't been able to complete. Her life was hers.
And perhaps our children aren't here to complete our unfinished stories either.
In this episode, we explore:
- The young person who leaves a six-figure job to figure out who he really is
- The young person who discovers genuine happiness working with plants rather than following a traditional professional path
- Young people questioning the pressure to participate in alcohol and drug culture
- Why a different path isn't necessarily a lesser path
- The difference between guiding a child and designing their life
- How parents can begin examining their own fears and expectations
- Dr. Shefali Tsabary's philosophy of conscious parenting and the idea that our children can become our teachers and awakeners
- Why our children's accomplishments don't define our success as parents
- The difference between an impressive life and a meaningful life
- How this same issue shows up in adults, entrepreneurs, and business leaders
- Why a successful business, impressive title, or large income doesn't necessarily mean we're living an aligned life
- How this connects to Sari's previous episode about numbers and the ways we measure ourselves
- The question: "Are we measuring the things that actually matter?"
- What it might look like to raise—and become—people who know themselves
A question for parents:
Would I still want this for my child if nobody else ever knew about it?
Who is my child actually showing me that they are?
And for all of us:
Who are you when nobody is impressed?
Who are you when the numbers disappear?
Who are you when the title disappears?
Who are you when the résumé disappears?
Are you living the life you were supposed to live—or the life that is actually yours?
Maybe success isn't becoming impressive.
Maybe success is becoming yourself.
A note from Sari
This episode is dedicated to the parents and young people I have the privilege of working with right now.
I'm watching parents become more open, young people become more authentic, and families begin to question some of the definitions of success we've inherited.
And I find that incredibly hopeful.
Thank you for teaching me.
Connect with Sari
Sari Stone is a holistic coach, educator, and tutor who works with children, teens, young adults, business leaders, and parents, to help people come back to themselves, navigate change, and live with greater authenticity and alignment.
Transform Your Life: Just Count Me In is about the conversations that help us Flow. Evolve. Transform.
Thank you for joining me!
If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today!
Impressive Versus Successful
SPEAKER_00Hi, I'm Sari Stone, host of Transform Your Life, Just Count Me In, and I'm so happy to welcome you to this episode. I've had the greatest week this past week, and I've been watching my clients and their families and thinking, wait a minute, what is going on here? There's like such a change in the way people are relating to their children and adults are relating to themselves. So whether you're a student, a parent, a business leader, if you've ever questioned, Am I honestly doing what's best for the person right in front of me, this episode's for you. If you've ever questioned, has our society somewhere along the line confused being impressive with being successful? This is also for you. Come with a curious attitude. You're going to come away from this episode with some tools to help you discern and disentangle the two from your life so that you can lead, parent, and live your own life with more clarity. This episode is 100% dedicated to the parents, young people, and my young business leaders who I've had the privilege of working with and am working with right now because something good is happening. Something's been happening in my work lately that's really, really excited and inspired me. I'm seeing parents become so much more open and young people become so much more honest about who they are. I'm noticing families start to question some of the definitions of success that we've inherited without ever taking a good look at them. And I find that really encouraging. So this is not an episode telling parents what they're doing wrong. Absolutely not. It is the opposite. It's about celebrating the parents in this new generation of people raising kids and those of us raising ourselves who are beginning to do something differently. It's about celebrating young people who are brave enough to become themselves. Because I keep coming back to one question. What if success isn't what we thought it was?
Letting Kids Write Their Story
SPEAKER_00And what if this isn't just about our kids? I've been thinking a lot about this since my last podcast episode about numbers, because maybe the question isn't only whether we're measuring ourselves. Maybe the question is, are we measuring the things that actually matter? I know this from the child side of the equation because I actually experienced this myself. When I graduated from high school, I just wanted to go cross-country, figure out where else I might want to live, and I didn't know exactly whether I wanted to go to college right away. And I was starting to just wonder, maybe I don't even want to go to college at all, right? And my parents were, I'm sure, not happy about this decision. But I worked really hard, I packed up my pinto, and I went cross country. Eventually I did end up ending up in Colorado, and that's where I established residency and went to college. But this was not my parents' plan, and I can only imagine that they must have been freaking out. They both came from immigrant families and they hadn't had the opportunity to go to college right after high school. So they had big dreams for me. They had a picture of what opportunity looked like for me. And here I was, instead of saying, awesome, let's go do this, I told them I really need to go figure some things out before I do anything. I realize now, on the other side of that, as a parent, how scary that must have been for them. But I can tell you that neither one of them expressed any type of freakout or any type of doubt in me. I'm sure they weren't happy with it, but I didn't know and I was too oblivious to pay attention if they did. And they realized that my job was not to complete the part of their life that they weren't able to complete. They realized that their dreams were theirs and they wanted better for me, and I think that's just normal, but their sacrifices were theirs, their experiences were theirs, and my life was mine. And I think that distinction is incredibly important because sometimes we love our kids so much that we want to make sure we give them every single opportunity, whether we had it or not, and that is beautiful. But sometimes, without realizing it, we can begin asking our children to complete our unfinished stories, and they're not here to do that, they're here to write their own. What
Supporting Different Paths With Boundaries
SPEAKER_00I'm seeing right now is parents who are starting to say, maybe my child's path doesn't have to look like I thought it would. One of the people I talked to, his son just left a good paying six-figure job because something inside of him was just saying, This isn't me, I'm not happy living in the state that this requires me to live in. And I know that there's something else for me, I know that there's something else out there that I can do. And the father is supportive of that because ultimately he wants his son to be happy. And instead of saying, Oh my god, what are you doing? He's just asking his child, what are you trying to figure out? Maybe somebody doesn't choose to become what they thought they were going to become when they were asked that question every year when they were going to elementary school. Maybe they discover that working in a greenhouse with plants brings them tremendous joy. Maybe somebody doesn't want their traditional college path. Maybe they decided they wanted to go to VOTEC because they love that. Maybe they even just need a year to make up their minds or change their direction when they're in college or when they started a career. Maybe they just don't know yet. I'm seeing so many young people who are making different choices around the social scene too. Some are not interested in that constant alcohol or drug culture. Some of them are starting to ask really different questions. They want real connection, they want meaning. They want to take care of themselves, take care of their bodies. They're looking for something that feels more authentic to them. And I'm not suggesting that every decision somebody makes is automatically the right one. Young people still need guidance and they still need some boundaries and accountability. They need some adults who will sometimes show them the boundary, and if the answer will be no, but there is a huge difference between guiding somebody and designing their life for them. And I'm seeing parents learn that difference. And honestly, it gives me tremendous hope. Your child's life is not your resume. There are people that I run into, and I they're great people, but literally I have no idea what they're doing or what they're interested in because I ask how they're doing, and all I get is a big report about how their kids are doing, maybe if their grandparents, how their grandchildren are doing, and it's not that I'm not interested in their families, but
Your Child Is Not Your Resume
SPEAKER_00they themselves, it turns out, are really not building their own resume for life at all right now. And this is where we need to look at one of our cultural definitions of success. We celebrate the child who gets into a very prestigious college, we celebrate the child who gets the six-figure job, the child who becomes the doctor, the lawyer, an entrepreneur, and definitely we should be celebrating accomplishments. We should be proud. But I'm also wondering, when did impressive become interchangeable with successful? And even more importantly, when did our children's accomplishments become evidence that we succeeded as parents? Your child's college acceptance isn't a parenting award. Their salary is not your parenting award. Their job title is not a parenting award, and their resume not a parenting award. And their struggles aren't necessarily evidence that you failed as a parent. Because what happens to the child who doesn't have the impressive story? The kid who's sitting at home trying to figure things out, a child who maybe learned a different way or struggled academically, a young adult who just doesn't quite want college, the kid who really likes working in an animal shelter, the person who discovers that working with plants makes them truly happy? What about these people that take a different path? What about the child who's simply a really good human being? Do we celebrate that with the same enthusiasm? I'm not sure. Do we celebrate kindness? Do we celebrate their integrity, their courage, their curiosity, how resilient they are? Do we celebrate their self-awareness, their ability to say no, their ability to admit, I don't know? Their ability to say, I feel like I am disappointing you when I make this decision. The ability to walk away from something that everyone else thinks that you should want. Because maybe those things matter just as much as what we've been taught to believe. And maybe success isn't becoming impressive. Being impressive is being impressive. Maybe success is becoming yourself. And maybe our job as parents and coaches and leaders and bosses and simply human beings isn't to make everyone fit the life we imagined for them. Maybe our job is to create enough safety, enough love, enough space for people to discover the life that's actually theirs. And maybe
Children As Teachers Of Our Fears
SPEAKER_00that's what it means to come home to yourself. One of the people who I enjoyed listening to over the summer, I enjoyed one of her books. Um her name is Shafale Tuzbari, and she is big in the conscious parenting movement. She talks about children as awakeners, not simply people that we're here to mold, but people who can bring our own fears, our own expectations, our own control, our own perfectionism and unconscious patterns to the surface. And I love that idea. Because what if we turned parenting around and instead of asking, how do I get my child to become more of what I think they should become, we ask, what is my child showing me? What is this child teaching me about control? What is this child teaching me about my boundaries? What is this child teaching me about fear? About my own childhood, about what I think success means. What is this child teaching me about what other people think? About my need to be able to tell a good story about my child. Because our children can expose us in many ways that nobody else can, and they do. If you're aware of this, I can tell you firsthand my children have been some of my greatest teachers, and the lessons have not been comfortable, but it they were so transformational, so important as far as me trying to clean up my act in just the way that I thought about things. I think the parents that I'm working with who are beginning to recognize this deserve to be celebrated. They are not giving up their parenting at all. They're just becoming more conscious. Maybe our job isn't to raise impressive children, maybe it's to raise children who know who they are. It's bigger than parenting, too, because we created a culture that confuses impressive with meaningful. What if we're teaching kids to build resumes before we've taught them how to build their lives? This is where I want to broaden the conversation because I do not think that this only applies to parents. I think it applies to all of us. I work with kids and teenagers, young adults, parents, and some business leaders, and the same question pops up everywhere. At some point, and it's actually easier to pivot on it, the younger you are, the easier it seems to be to pivot, but it also works if you're older. Is this actually my life? You can build a really successful business and then realize, oh my gosh, I really don't enjoy running it. You can achieve the title, the promotion, get the raise, and realize you actually didn't really want that responsibility. You can make the money and be exhausted. You can build an impressive resume and still feel completely disconnected from yourself. You can accomplish everything you thought you were supposed to accomplish by this age and eventually realize wait a minute, do I really even want that? And that's why I know this is not just a parenting conversation, this is a human conversation. I've done that. Because children and adults can spend a lot of time living up to someone else's definition of success.
Beyond Numbers Toward Meaning
SPEAKER_00So the numbers actually connects directly to my last episode. My last episode was about numbers and the power we give them over our lives, not to discount their importance because they are, but you'd have to just check out the episode. I still believe it was an important episode to record because we reduced so much of our life to numbers. Downloads, followers, grades, income, weight, age, test scores, college rankings, business revenue. Numbers are not bad. Numbers can be really useful information, but they are not the whole story. And after recording that episode, I kept thinking maybe the bigger question isn't just why are we measuring ourselves? Maybe it's what are we measuring? Because you can have a very impressive number attached to a life that doesn't feel good. And that doesn't make the number less impressive. You can have a very impressive car, a very impressive boat, live in a very impressive house. And there's nothing wrong with any of these things. It's just when we confuse that with success, we can get into trouble and end up with a shell of a life. The outside but not the inside. Like a frame without a picture. One life might look more impressive, but that doesn't automatically make it more meaningful. The numbers don't tell the whole story, and they never have. What if we raise children who know themselves? What if our goal wasn't to raise impressive children? What if our goal is to raise self-aware children? Things that we spend thousands of dollars in coaching and therapy later on in adulthood because we weren't as encouraged to become self-aware and we kind of went along with the program and then found out that, ooh, this program isn't really mine. What if we raise children who know what they value, children who know how to make decisions, children who know how to trust themselves, and who are allowed to make mistakes, children who know how to say no and know how to ask for help and can tolerate being uncomfortable. Children can have those difficult conversations, children who can be alone without believing they're worthless, who can succeed without believing that that makes them better than everybody else, and who can fail without them believing that they are the failures. Children who understand that money matters very much, but money is not the identity. Education matters very much, but your degree is not your identity. Work matters very much, but a job title is not what you are. Children who know I am more than what I accomplish, that's the kind of success that I want for our kids. And then I have to turn the mirror back to myself because I can't talk about this without talking about my own life. Because I've reached a place where I am incredibly grateful to be doing work that I love. I love working with kids. I love helping them navigate school and life. I love supporting adults. I love coaching people that are running businesses because I feel like it's changing the workplace. I love watching
Questions That Reveal True Success
SPEAKER_00a person begin to see themselves differently and its impact on other people. And lately I've noticed something myself. I am not interested in chasing everything. I don't need to be everywhere. I don't need every social media platform. LinkedIn feels good to me because it feels real. Having conversations like this make it feel real. Working with people feels real. Being present feels real. And when I stop trying to force things, I just feel better. When I go with the flow, not in a passive way, but in an aligned way, I feel better. And maybe that's another definition of success for me. Not how much can I prove, but how much in my actual life am I present for? So if you're listening to this as a parent and you're thinking, oh my gosh, have I been doing this? Holy cow, please do not beat yourself up. We've all been guilty of it at one time or another. This isn't the point. Most of us are doing the best they can with the information we have. We do worry, we do compare, we do want our children to have security. We do not want them to struggle the way we might have struggled. And sometimes our love comes out as control because we're afraid. That's human. The invitation is not, please become a perfect conscious parent. If you can do that, let me know, and I'm gonna have you on that podcast because we're all gonna learn from you. I personally don't think there is a such thing. I think the invitation is become curious. Ask yourself, now that I think about it, what am I afraid of? What do I actually expect from my child? What part of my own story might I be trying to complete through them? That's a big one. And then the question I really want you to sit with, would I still want this for my child if no one else ever knew about it? And who is my child actually showing me they are? Not who I imagined, not who I wanted, not who I was, not who their sibling is or who their friends are, but who are they? Maybe our children are asking us the same question, and maybe that's why this has been on my mind, because I don't think this is just about kids. Maybe our children are asking us, who am I? And life is asking us the same thing. Who are you when nobody is impressed with you? Who are you when nobody's watching? Who are you when the numbers disappear or don't give you the number that you want? Who are you when your title disappears? Who are you when the resume doesn't matter? Who are you when you stop trying to prove that you're enough? Maybe that's where the authentic living begins. I want to end this episode differently. I really want to celebrate. I want to celebrate the parents I'm working with who are beginning to loosen their grip, the parents who are learning to listen, the parents who are willing to question their own expectations, the parents who are realizing that guidance and acceptance can coexist with each other, the parents who are allowing their children and encouraging them to become themselves, even if it's scary sometimes. And I want to celebrate the young people, the ones that are figuring it out, the ones taking a different path, the ones asking better questions and choosing
Celebration Closing And One Last Question
SPEAKER_00actual connection and choosing health, choosing meaning, the ones that are brave enough to discover what really makes them come alive inside and how it's not found on a screen. The ones who have the courage to say, in the big picture, this isn't for me, but let's go figure out what is. So my final thoughts on this are yes, celebrate the graduation, celebrate the promotion and the college acceptance, celebrate if they get a great paying job, celebrate the successful business, celebrate all of it, but celebrate the person even more. Because your child didn't come here to complete your unfinished dreams and you didn't come here to live someone else's definition of success either. Maybe our job isn't to create impressive lives. Maybe our job is just to create authentic lives, lives that are meaningful, lives that are connected, lives that are aligned, and actually lives that belong to the person living them. Maybe success is not becoming impressive as much as it's becoming yourself. And maybe that's what it means to come home to yourself. If this episode resonated in any way with you, please hit subscribe, download, and share it with somebody who you think it might help or inspire. I'm Sari Stone. This is Transform Your Life. Just count me in. To the parents and young people I work with, thank you for teaching me. And to everyone who's listening, I want to leave you with one last question. Am I living the life I was supposed to live? Am I living a life that is actually mine? Until next time, flow, evolve, transform, and count me in. See you next week.